The Image of God (2)
What does it mean that God created Man (that is,
humanity—male and female) in his image? Genesis 1:26-27 you remember,
says, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them
rule...So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he
created him; male and female he created them."
Since most of us don’t perceive of God as having a fleshly body we
immediately exclude the human’s physical body from the image. We tell
ourselves something like, "Well, God doesn’t have a body so when he made
us in his image he couldn’t have been thinking about our body. We need
to look for something about us that is like something God has." From
there some of us concluded that we’re in the image of God because we
"reason". God reasons, so do we—there’s the image. Others decided it was
our "choosing" capacity that imaged God. Many of us have concluded that
as well as a body "we have ‘a non-material spirit’ and it is our
‘spirit’ (or soul) that reflects the likeness of God. Others go for our
"moral" capacity—we’re like God in that so it isn’t our rational or
willing/choosing ability and such like—it’s our capacity to have moral
fellowship with God.
All of these have at least one thing in common—it’s a part of
the human that is in the image of God. Some things are excluded. Our
fleshly bodies, for example, our mortality, our need for food and water.
As we begin to list these things we realise that it isn’t an entire
human that is made in the image of God—it is some piece or pieces of a
human. So that (to over-simplify the matter),
it’s as though God said,
"I’ll make humans and I’ll make a part of them in my image."
That isn’t what he said.
If we imagine Adam (and later Eve) opening his eyes, newly created, it is Adam and not a part of him that is in the image of God. God could point to him and say, "He is in my image."
Should we conclude then that God has a mortal body and parts? Should
we conclude that every constituent element that makes up a human images
something in God? I don’t think so.
I don’t think the image of God in man deals with what he is made of. Following people like Edmund Jacob and J.D Smart I think we should see the meaning of the phrase "in the image of God" as functional and relational.
As ancient kings would put up lifeless images that represented them
in different locations that reminded the citizens of the glory and
dominion of their king so God created a living Man to represent Him
wherever humans went. God created humans with a destiny and a
mission—they were created to reflect God and in the Genesis 1 context,
they were created to reflect God in their exercise of dominion.
The entire chapter (whatever else it was meant to teach us) teaches
us that God exercised his sovereignty to bless, to make to flourish, to
generate harmony and completeness. If the Man lived with that commission
in mind he would be fulfilling his role as one in the image of God and
expressing the glory of God.
If this is the direction we should go then we would be able to look
at the entire human (not bits of him or aspects of him) as "in the image
of God." His entire person (body, soul and spirit, so to speak) was to
be taken up in living and reflecting God’s likeness. We wouldn’t be
required to say that God has a mortal body since "the image" has nothing
to do with substance or what the man is made of. We would
look at how he lived out his life and, say, in the unique case of Jesus
Christ, we would say, "he is imaging/reflecting God."